Policing Debate (Moved from the Confessional Thread)

[John Wilkes Booth]

Originally Posted by tore

I'm with Fiddler on this. The job is to enforce the law and so that's what you do. If a constable gets to pick and choose what laws should be enforced, that hurts the integrity of the whole police force.

i actually agree with the sentiment that if you are a cop, you should enforce the law, as that is your job. i will say, however, that i would wager just about anything that every cop has at one point or another decided to 'look the other way' at least once in their career. this could mean not ticketing someone for jaywalking, not arresting someone for possession, etc.

the severity of the crime they are ignoring may vary, but i would be surprised if there are actually cops out there that always enforce every law with 100% consistency. so with this in mind, then if enforcing the law is 'doing your job' then any instance of you being lenient or not enforcing a particular law is you 'not doing your job.' so if you want to live up to the standard you are espousing, then you should avoid ever falling into this trap.

that being said... i do think that enforcing a law you think is wrong is compromising at least one of your principles. even if it is what you are supposed to do, as a cop. i'll back off on the whole career vs job argument, as i think that's a bit of a digression from the real point here, which is about compromising your principles. if you compromised them because being a cop is important to you for other reasons than money, then you still compromised them. i really don't see how that is any better tbh.

it could simply be that doing some jobs requires sometimes compromising on your ideals. i'm not actually judging cops/soldiers/politicians/whatever in making this statement, as i've been in the situation myself. a few examples come to mind...

working at walmart, i had to sell **** to people. i worked overnight and was the only one who could sell **** in electronics and run the register in sporting goods, etc. so there were a few items i had to sell to people that made me feel a bit uneasy. one of them was air duster, which kids use to get high on, and which causes permanent brain damage. i would sell it to them nonetheless, as long as they had ID, as it wasn't my job to deny sales or judge what people buy.

i also had to sell ammunition in the sporting goods section, which is all well and good if i'm selling it to a normal legal gun owner who's going to use them responsibly. but not all of the customers i had were like that. many of them were obviously gang members, and a few of them even had gang tattoos that i recognized because these gangs were based in the same neighborhood that i lived in. meanwhile, this kind of **** was on the local news almost constantly:



but once again, wasn't my job to judge who could and couldn't buy ammo, aside from checking ID. if you're of age, you can buy ammo; it's as simple as that.

i could try to wash my hands of any moral compromise and say hey i was just doing my job. but i can't deny that i basically did **** that i thought was (morally) the wrong thing to do. but the circumstances were such that doing so was the better option for me at the time. so i feel it's only honest to admit that i'm willing to compromise on my ideals for pragmatic reasons. i would honestly have nothing to say against cops or soldiers or politicians if they made a similar admission. and some of them probably do. but some of them don't. they assume a sort of moral infallibility in any case where they are following protocol, because the system is such that we literally need them to follow protocol for the system to function.

which is fine. i'm not decrying that fact, as i don't have a better solution. we need cops, and cops need to follow protocol. all i was saying is if the protocol conflicts with your own ideals then that requires compromising your ideals. it just is what it is. the world is a messy place.

that being said... i do understand why they have to sort of uphold the ideology that following protocol is never wrong... undermining this kind of thing can be subversive, and authoritarian systems can't tolerate such subversion. and police and military agencies are inherently authoritarian.

final disclaimer... nothing personal against fiddler or any other cop. i do generally get along with them as people. just my view on the nature of the system.

[DwnWthVwls]

I'm not against voting. There is just no one/thing to vote for. If the country had a voted on going to war in Iraq I would have signed up to say No.

[fiddler]

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

I'm not against voting. There is just no one/thing to vote for. If the country had a voted on going to war in Iraq I would have signed up to say No.

That's the system for you. Either you work with the system to fight the system, or you stay quiet and you do the system's work for it.

I noticed how you did not respond to the warning v. ticket comment that I made. You are saying that you don't get to pick and choose, which I agree with. But, by the letter of the law, if you are going 36 in a 35 you have broken the law and deserve a ticket. Which I assume you don't want THAT running around being enforced - granted there are some towns & such that DO enforce it that harshly. It's generally hated.

[DwnWthVwls]

Originally Posted by fiddler

That's the system for you. Either you work with the system to fight the system, or you stay quiet and you do the system's work for it.

I noticed how you did not respond to the warning v. ticket comment that I made. You are saying that you don't get to pick and choose, which I agree with. But, by the letter of the law, if you are going 36 in a 35 you have broken the law and deserve a ticket. Which I assume you don't want THAT running around being enforced - granted there are some towns & such that DO enforce it that harshly. It's generally hated.

From my understanding warnings go on your record, so it's reasonable for a first time offender to get a warning before a ticket.

As for the whole speeding thing, if you don't agree that 1 mph over is a good enough reason to pull someone over then don't do it. Just be consistent.

I've never blamed a cop for enforcing the law, I got caught I own it. I get my chance to argue in court if it's worth the hassle. The only time I've ever given a cop an attitude was after my car got smashed by a drunk driver (while parked in front of my house) and the scumbag told me to lie to get more money out of the driver. I called him out for being a douche, and then dealt with a different officer for the rest of the night.

[fiddler]

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

From my understanding warnings go on your record, so it's reasonable for a first time offender to get a warning before a ticket.

As for the whole speeding thing, if you don't agree that 1 mph over is a good enough reason to pull someone over then don't do it. Just be consistent.

I've never blamed a cop for enforcing the law, I got caught I own it. I get my chance to argue in court if it's worth the hassle. The only time I've ever given a cop an attitude was after my car got smashed by a drunk driver (while parked in front of my house) and the scumbag told me to lie to get more money out of the driver. I called him out for being a douche, and then dealt with a different officer for the rest of the night.

Warnings depend on the state. In some they drop off after a set amount of time and it's like it never happened. We always have to enforce the law even if we don't agree with it. But it doesn't mean that e can't make a judgement call and perhaps not enforce it to the letter of the law. I think you simply misunderstood what I was saying. I'd still bust you for the drugs. I might not slams your face into the hood ofa car but you'd get busted. I'd try to help you too. That's
what I was saying the difference was b

I so would have reported that cop.

[DwnWthVwls]

Originally Posted by fiddler

Warnings depend on the state. In some they drop off after a set amount of time and it's like it never happened. But that's what I'm saying, if we don't get to pick and choose what laws to enforce or not to, it means that we are enforcing the law to the letter. One mph means a ticket. Not a warning.

I so would have reported that cop.

Idk how it is where you are but in NJ a warning is an official piece of paper that they hand you. It's still part of the law, it's not picking and choosing, it's a lesser punishment for first time offenders.

Can't speak for all of NJ, but that's how my speeding warning worked.

[Plankton]

Originally Posted by fiddler

...by the letter of the law, if you are going 36 in a 35 you have broken the law and deserve a ticket. Which I assume you don't want THAT running around being enforced - granted there are some towns & such that DO enforce it that harshly. It's generally hated.

St. Charles, Illinois is notorious for that. It really boils down to the judicial level in most of those cases though.

[Oriphiel]

I think you both have good points. On the one hand, it's hard to sympathize with soldiers and police officers when they enforce laws that we/they see as unjust. On the other hand, the current political system is so large and bogged down that it seems almost impossible for the average person to really be heard, and it takes an extraordinary amount of force and time to have those unjust laws questioned and repealed. Even when people vote, our system dominated by just two parties can come off as a "pick your poison" kind of situation.

[DwnWthVwls]

My stance is that you do your job, if someone is breaking multiple laws then charge them for it. I already said if you catch me I'll own it, but you gotta catch me because I purposefully break laws I don't agree with everyday (which are the ONLY laws I do break).

As for your second question. I wouldn't be grateful and I wouldn't say anything. I'm not gonna show you gratitude because you didn't prosecute to the full extent, you still prosecuted me for something I don't see anything wrong with.

Just do your job and don't abuse your authority. That's all I ask of cops, unfortunately none I've ever met seem to do that.

[fiddler]

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

My stance is that you do your job, if someone is breaking multiple laws then charge them for it. I already said if you catch me I'll own it, but you gotta catch me because I purposefully break laws I don't agree with everyday (which are the ONLY laws I do break).

As for your second question. I wouldn't be grateful and I wouldn't say anything. I'm not gonna show you gratitude because you didn't prosecute to the full extent, you still prosecuted me for something I don't see anything wrong with.

Just do your job and don't abuse your authority. That's all I ask of cops, unfortunately none I've ever met seem to do that.

That's the point. If you break a law, you put yourself into a situation where you could potentially clash with the cops. Silently protesting a law by breaking it over and over again fuels the system. Keeps the nuts and bolts nice and tight.

So you feel that we shouldn't pick and choose which laws to enforce and which ones we do not enforce...but you're also not going to say anything when it benefits you. If you like it or not, a misdemeanor v. a felony is a hell of a trade off.

You haven't met the right cops.


Just as a side note of the ~20 tickets I've ever written 15 of them where in a ten month time span when the Army was real gung-ho on writing tickets. Stupidest B.S. I ever saw at the time and is still in the top 25 for S.B.S.